[yowlingcat]

I took a similar trajectory and I couldn't agree more. In many ways, I really regret the time I invested into startups tackling actual hard problems. You are correct that the support systems do not exist, and so I wish I had worked at a bigcorp much earlier in my career than now. While I'm thinking I'm there now, I could have drastically accelerated my overall career progress if I had done things in the opposite order.